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Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925) Complicated text, important because it’s a subtext in the other two texts we’re gonna read, interesting modernist novel but also a kind of subtext in Saturday by McEwan. it also reemerges in Mothering Sunday.Victorian family, educated at home. Use of her father’s library (Leslie Stephen) because she was denied University education. Literary activity 1912-1941/intermittent illness. Bloomsbury group, Leonard Woolf (husband), Hogarth Press. Flush: biography of a dog, represented by its pov. One of feminist’s major artist Fiction and Non fiction-Novels -Diaries & letters -essays Virginia Woolf kept an almost daily diary thoughout her life and wrote many thousands of letters, these materials provide a fascinating insight into her writings and the workings of her mind. Also personal detail such as Woolf’s relationship with Vita Sackville-West and other women.
Theory of the Novel: woolf’s attempts to define her style VW and modern fiction •NOVELS •DIARIES & LETTERS •ESSAYS •Virginia Woolf kept an almost daily diary throughout her life and wrote many thousands of letters •These materials provide a fascinating insight into her writings and the workings of her mind •Also personal details such as Woolf’s relationship with Vita Sackville-West and other women Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown •Written as a polemical answer to Arnold Bennett’s claim that the novel is in crisis due to the failure of novelists in the art of “character-making” which he finds crucial for successful novel writing The dispute bears clear marks of a conflict between two literary generations, but in doing so it also touches on some crucial theoretical questions, and is highly instructive on the issue of Woolf's stance on representation and on the status of character in fiction It is clear that creating a believable character, “a flesh-and-blood Mrs. Brown”, means abandoning the interest in outside details and embracing the full complexity and incoherence of what is to be represented
Modern Fiction •Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi- transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? •Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. ‘The proper stuff of fiction’ does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.
Moments of Being According to Woolf, a moment of being is a moment when an individual is fully conscious of his experience, a moment when he is not only aware of himself but catches a glimpse of his connection to a larger pattern hidden behind the opaque surface of daily life •Flashes of awareness •Epiphanies •Visions
Lyrical Novel•A new type of novel should contain features of both prose and of poetry •Such prose should also be dramatic, not only poetic, in the sense that the writer will use the influence of music, for instance, to create a dramatic feel •Free from the old conventions, it should reveal “life as we know it”, as well as “a new mode of perception”
Woolf’s quest for meaning •Woolf ’s quest for meaning, her puzzlement over life’s riddles, her sense of wonder intermingled with her anxiety and doubt •In the voices of her narrators, we feel the presence of Woolf trying to create meaning within her narrative •Multiple perspectives on the events •Characters who see and who are seen by the others •Mind of the characters, memories, dreams and fantasies •Inner experiences
Female/feminist perspective•Woolf’s voice reflects her sense of herself writing as a woman in a man’s world (including a literary culture dominated by men) See A Room of One’s Own (1929)
•She challenges the ‘male sentence’ and provides an alternative to it. In this work, she praises Dorothy Richardson whom she credits with inventing a 'female sentence‘ •Female sentence is based on coordination/parataxis
•Female structure of feeling & female writing
Free Indirect Speech/Style/Discourse
•MULTIPLE (and limited) POINTS OF VIEW •Shifts/transitions from one point of view to another
•New form and structure of the novel
•‘Omniscient’ narrators
Stream of consciousness •Stream of consciousness, narrative technique in nondramatic fiction intended to render the flow of myriad impressions—visual, auditory, physical, associative, and subliminal—that impinge on the consciousness of an individual and form part of his awareness along with the trend of his rational thoughts •Interior monologue •No punctuation •JAMES JOYCE
Free Indirect Speech
•The role of the word ‘plunge’ •The boundaries between present and past are fluid •Clarissa’s plunge into the open air when she bursts open the window at Bourton •She is plunging into life, into memory. She is opening the windows of life and plunging into it. The language has a light airy feel supported by the name of Clarissa herself •Connection with the water, sea imagery
London •Mapping the city •See ‘Mrs Dalloway’s London’ on Google maps •Characters walking •It is especially Peter’s walk that provides visible illustration of the topography of the city
•Westminster is at the centre of the novel •Big Ben is a pervasive presence •Monuments, streets, parks
•A city novel in which Woolf establishes a network of external and internal connections between its urban inhabitants, making a large city like London feel like a small town
Impressionism•To emphasize that there is not ‘one reality’, Woolf depicts London from the perspective of every character in terms of his or her individual interior space •Panoramic view of the city through the disjointed perspectives of the novel’s characters
•Polyphonic novel •Narration not divided into chapters – continuous
Modernity •Urban experience •Movement and speed •Focus on the airplane and the limousine in the early pages •Noises and images •‘Making letters in the sky’ •Advertising (toffee)
•The novel is a document about England in a period of cultural transformation
The flowers How fresh like frilled linen clean from a laundry laid in wicker trays the roses looked; and dark and prim the red carnations, holding their heads up; and all the sweet peas spreading in their bowls, tinged violet, snow white, pale – as if it were the evening and girls in muslin frocks came out to pick sweet peas and roses after the superb summer's day, with its almost blue-black sky, its delphiniums, its carnations, its arum lilies was over; and it was the moment between six and seven when every flower – roses, carnations, irises, lilac – glows; white, violet, red, deep orange; every flower seems to burn by itself, softly, purely in the misty beds
Middle aged people•Characters conscious of approaching death •The central event is a suicide •There is little promise implied by the young people such as Elizabeth or Miss Kilman •The novel is an elegy for Clarissa, for Septimus Smith, and for the ineffectual society to which Clarissa belongs
Clarissa Dalloway •Passivity of Clarissa, locked into her stereotypical social roles of aging hostess, supportive political wife, and household manager, contrasts with Peter, who remains alive and open to possibilities •For her, giving parties provides the possibility of unity that her personal life lacks •Her power to connect people •An artist •Clarissa’s radical oscillation between depression and exaltation, between past and present, between regret and satisfaction, between longing for an alternative life and glorying in this one, and between nihilism and affirmation of life
Richard Dalloway •Clarissa's husband •Richard seems in love with his wife but feels uncomfortable showing his affection •A member of the government, he continually must attend councils, committees, and important meetings •Lunch at Lady Bruton’s •In the afternoon he buys flowers for Clarissa
Peter Walsh •Just back from India •Peter’s present life is composed of love affairs, work, and quarrels – what Clarissa’s life lacks •Peter values personal relationships and feels they add to the “infinite richness, this life” •Woolf strikingly contrasts Richard and Peter, whom Mrs Dalloway had loved passionately and who is, like Sally, her missed opportunity •Peter cannot forget Clarissa, who still captivates him •Playing with his penknife during his visit to Clarissa, he demonstrates considerable anger and hostility (but the penknife is also a phallic symbol) •Peter is a kind of artist; indeed, as he fantasizes about a girl he follows, he reflects that “the better part of life” is “made up”, and uses his imagination as a refuge from “this fever of living”
Septimus Warren Smith They never meet but they are very similar (same POV) •Literary young man before World War I •War veteran •‘Shell-shocked’ •Trauma of the war •Obsessed by his friend Evans •Quotes Shakespeare •When Dr. Holmes pushes into his home to see him, Septimus throws himself out the window to his death •Engaged to Lucrezia because “the panic was on him – that he could not feel” •Role of the Italian ‘Rezia’
Doubling Like Clarissa, Septimus is pale and beak-nosed •Both are prey to their own imaginations •Clarissa must contend with the “brutal monster” of hatred
with Clarissa’s sanity bc she’s no longer alone and she can bring people together. Idea of creating life by bringing people together. •Woolf once described insanity as a form of death because its intense loneliness created a human void for the sufferer •In her parties, Clarissa fights this emptiness, this void •Clarissa brings people together and thus, creates a human dialogue. She creates life, and thus, sanity
Other female characters •Sally Seton •Clarissa's best friend, staying with Clarissa at Bourton •Rebellious instinct •Surprisingly married a wealthy man
•Elizabeth Dalloway •Compared to a blooming flower, the metonym for spring and growth, as she is a young girl coming into womanhood •Miss Kilman
Sanity and Madness •A thin line divides sanity and madness, civilization and barbarism, love and hate, isolation and participation in the community, communication and incoherence, form and chaos •Motif of illness—>influences doctors •Influenza, neurosis •Doctors (Holmes and Bradshaw) and a medicalized society—>subverted by the cause of Septimus’ suicide
https://web.infinito.it/utenti/d/dariozo/Sito%20Scuola/MrsDalloway.htm
SexualityMain issue in Mrs Dalloway At a certain point Clarissa realizes that she lacks something essential: “It was not beauty; it was not mind. It was something central which permeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together” the content of men and women together, refers also to homosexual relations in this novel. On one hand Clarissa’s menopause, loss of fertility, on the other hand Elizabeth and feminine blossoming, it prevents Clarissa from following her sexual desires.
Women fascinated by women The constraints of respectability prevent Clarissa from following her sexual bent Sally Seton represents the libidinous, forbidden, unacknowledged self Clarissa remembers her fascination with Sally, for whom she felt ‘what men felt’ when they were young. this reference to their kiss—>Their kiss: ‘the most exquisite moment of her whole life’. It is recurrent in Woolf’s fiction, fascination for women connected with her own experience. Sally is really important in Clarissa’s memories and she gets invited to the party. Epilogue: it includes another figure, the old lady. The old lady appears in the neighboring house. Because of Septimus’ death and the old lady, Clarissa steps out of the social circle of her party and connects to the larger sense of life and death occurring around her, so she spends some time alone and she watches the
old lady in the neighboring house and she switches on the light and sees this figures which is strictly connected with death, then she goes back to the party. The short time Clarissa spends in the little room is saturated with significant images and allusions Clarissa returns to the party charged with a sense of life and with a need to "assemble" with the people important to her. She has overcome the sense of isolation and returned to social connection.
One final “moment of being” •Peter is suddenly filled with a sense of ecstasy. He had been looking for Clarissa for a long time and suddenly she was there •Revelation •Epiphany •"It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was"
